Since A. Kowalsky's first report of the spectrum of cytochrome c in 1965, interest in the detection, assignment and interpretation of paramagnetic molecules has surged, especially in the last decade.
Two classes of systems have played a key role in the development of the field: heme proteins and iron-sulfur proteins. These two systems are unique in many respects, one of which is that they contain well-defined chromophores, each of which can be studied in detail outside the protein matrix. They are the most successfully studied macromolecules, and the first eight and last six of...

Molecular magnetism is a new field of research dealing with the synthesis and study of the physical properties of molecular assemblies involving open-shell units. It is essentially interdisciplinary, joining together organic, organometallic and inorganic chemists, as well as theoreticians, physicists and materials scientists.
At the core of research into molecular magnetism lie design and synthesis of new molecular assemblies exhibiting bulk properties such as long-range magnetic ordering or bistability with an hysteresis effect, which confers a memory effect on the system. In such terms,...

The study of the nature and dynamics of asteroids, comets, meteor streams, natural satellites and ring systems currently provides a wealth of information on the history and dynamical evolution of the solar system as a whole. This state of the art textbook, based on the recent NATO ASI The Dynamics of Small Bodies in the Solar System and written by the invited lecturers and other participants, provides an invaluable reference volume for all students and researchers in these subjects. The contributions are introduced by specially written reviews from renowned experts in their fields. It is...

This is the book of the ftrst ever International meeting dedicated entirely to Crystal th th Engineering, which occurred during 9 _20 September, 1996. It is thus entirely appropriate that it was a NATO Advanced Science Institute, and that the speakers represented the ofthe presentations, the good leading lights in the fteld from around the world. The quality humour of the speakers, the responsive, interactative audience, the wonderful setting, the outstanding food and the occasional hurricane all added up to two of the most enjoyable weeks of science that we have ever experienced (and for the...

Adaptive optics allows the theoretical limit of angular resolution to be achieved from a large telescope, despite the presence of turbulence. Thus an eight meter class telescope, such as one of the four in the Very Large Telescope operated by ESO in Chile, will in future be routinely capable of an angular resolution of almost 0.01 arcsec, compared tot he present resolution of about 0.5 arcsec for conventional imaging in good condition.
All the world's major telescopes either have adaptive optics or are in the process of building AO systems. It turns out that a reasonable fraction of the...

An extensive account of recent advances in the field, with principal emphasis on the interplay between the various experimental and theoretical methods that are used to obtain a molecular-level understanding of the stability, chemical reactivity, structural and dynamical properties of hydrogen bonded clusters. Several experimental techniques are presented (HR-IR, UV, PES). Critical accounts of the requirements of various experimental methods used to study the systems are also given (first principles electronic structure techniques, diffusion Monte Carlo, universal empirical models)....

For Louis Pasteur, the two distinctive properties of dissymmetric systems, optical activity and chiral discrimination, provided prime evidence for a Divine origin to the universe. Handedness appeared to be built into the macrocosm of the galaxies, each with a non-superposable mirror image by virtue of its rotation, as well as the microcosm of each molecule of most natural products. The best that the chemist in the laboratory could accomplish appeared to be the synthesis of the detordu internally-compensated meso-form and, as Pasteur ultimately came to admit, the externally-compensated racemic...

Mesometeorology was defined by Ligda in 1951 to include phe nomena which are too large to be observed by in situ sensors at a single station but too small to be defined adequately by conven tional station networks. The scientific, economic, and social im portance of weather events on the scales of 10-1000 km is not a new discovery, but only recently have the weather services, research laboratories, and academic scientists of the world begun to concen trate attention on these phenomena. An Advanced Study Institute was organized by the present editors to provide a focus and forum for review and...

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Palisades, New York, U.S.A., November 30-December 4, 1982

The first references to statistical extremes may perhaps be found in the Genesis (The Bible, vol. I): the largest age of Methu'selah and the concrete applications faced by Noah-- the long rain, the large flood, the structural safety of the ark --. But as the pre-history of the area can be considered to last to the first quarter of our century, we can say that Statistical Extremes emer- ged in the last half-century. It began with the paper by Dodd in 1923, followed quickly by the papers of Fre-chet in 1927 and Fisher and Tippett in 1928, after by the papers by de Finetti in 1932, by Gumbel in...